Shakina Nayfack: Making Trans Waves in TV and Beyond

Better than a Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion reboot, picture it: A milestone high school reunion at an ultra-conservative Catholic High School in Orange County…Shakina Nayfack, Class of (fill in the blank, we don’t do ages): performer, director, writer, producer, artistic director, and activist whose groundbreaking career has encompassed television, theater, and music with projects on Amazon, Hulu, Audible, and NBC; making television history not once, not twice, but three times. Sounds like a Most Successful Honoree, correct? Too bad the high school asked her to leave when she was the victim of bullying because of her identity as part of the LGBTQ community.

The multi-hyphenate entertainment goddess Shakina Nayfack survived those tough years and went on to become a founding member and artistic director of New York's Musical Theatre Factory, developing hundreds of musicals, including the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning A Strange Loop and her one-woman show, unabashedly titled Manifest Pussy, to critical and audience acclaim. For her theatre work, she has received the Lilly Award, the TRU Humanitarian Award from Theatre Resources Unlimited, and the Beatrice Terry Fellowship Award from the Drama League. She has had a pivotal role in front of and behind and behind the camera for the Transparent Musicale Finale, Hulu’s Difficult People with Billy Eichner, NBC’s Connecting, and Quantum Leap. And what a leap her life has had.

In this amazing chat, we talked about it all…in her candid, opinionated way…we chatted about her coming out journey, her first years moving to NY, getting into the theatre scene, the evolution of the LGBTQ community in media, activism fatigue and the need for mental rest, making TV history for the trans community, what the hell is going on in the nation right now, and yes, even those early high school years. Hosted by Alexander Rodriguez.